


a fever I am learning to live with

by forochel



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Banter, Canon Universe, Friends With Benefits, Happy Ending, Intimacy, M/M, Pining, Porn with Feelings, idolverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:01:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23488009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: Kang Younghyun, professional bassist, moonlights as a trainwreck: a pep talk about his secret crush's attractiveness turns into A Situation Heretofore Unimagined.
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K/Kim Wonpil
Comments: 43
Kudos: 172





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work of FANTASY based on fictional representations of real people. If you are or personally know any of the people tagged up above, please for both our sakes' hit backspace/the x button right the fuck now. 
> 
> muchas gracias to bysine for the encouragement and commentary, and to uglymandias/unconscious for making me tighten up the dialogue tags. all mistakes and errors of judgement remain my own. as do any chronological inaccuracies bc believe u me i am running out of spoons. 
> 
> the title & epigraph are courtesy of richard siken. 
> 
> last fic, I put wonpilie through the wringer! this time .... oh how the turntables, eh.

**You are a fever I am learning to live with,**   
**and everything is happening at the**   
**wrong end of a very long tunnel.**

\-- Richard Siken, 2004, ["Straw House, Straw Dog"](http://youngerpoets.yupnet.org/2008/04/17/straw-house-straw-dog-crush-by-richard-siken/)

* * *

**2018 - i  
**

"Do you still like him?' Younghyun asks, heart in his throat. This is terrible pillow talk. This is the safest time for this question: when Wonpil is sleepy, sated, sprawled over every inch of space spare in his bed.

A questioning hum follows, sweet and confused.

He could always just let this go, let it pass by, let it go gently into the good night.

"Sungjin-hyung," he clarifies. All he can see is Wonpil's sweat-matted mop of hair; his face is half-buried under the blanket, half-obscured by his fringe.

Another few seconds, a contained eternity, of silence pass. It's enough for the anxieties to bubble up, even though Younghyun knows by now, after three years of this, that Wonpil just gets _really_ sex-stupid.

Then Wonpil chuffs that familiar breathy post-coital laugh, more air than anything else, and he wriggles around so he's on his side, long limbs now curled under himself and flung over Younghyun.

"Of course not," he says to Younghyun's armpit, eyes closed and voice small and sticky with sleep. Oblivious to the way Younghyun's heart is doing irrational cartwheels in his chest, he continues, sounding a little annoyed, "Don't ask weird questions, hyung. I'm too sleepy for it."

Buoyed by rising hope, Younghyun can't help it when he reaches down to ruffle his hair and teasingly ask, "So I can when you're not sleepy?"

It is abruptly, unpleasantly cool as Wonpil makes a kittenish, grumpy noise and rolls away with most of the blanket. In mid-October, before the heating gets turned on but after the temperatures at night have started dipping dramatically, this is just _rude_.

"Yah!" Younghyun whispers harshly, tugging at the loose end of blanket sticking out from under Wonpil. "This isn't even your bed!"

Wonpil slurs out some syllables that might be "serves you right".

Younghyun sighs and forcibly repossesses his blanket, unrolling Wonpil from his burrito to a protesting whine.

"Share, Pilie," he scolds, though he sounds too obviously fond to even his own ears.

It doesn't matter, though, because somewhere between the whine and the next breath, Wonpl's fallen properly asleep, dead to the world, dead to the restless memories churning in Younghyun's mind.

—

**-i**

The tipping point was maybe this: one conversation, late one night, not too long after their long-dreamt-of debut.

Younghyun, deciding to take a break from the mindbending world of econometrics, discovers Wonpil folded into himself, sitting on the cold floor of the balcony where they hang their laundry to dry and staring up out of the window at the full harvest moon waxing bright in the sky.

He swears in surprise.

Wonpil looks up at him. The movement is dreamy, almost, like he isn't quite all the way here. There's a contemplative, quiet look on his face, so serious and still. Bathed in just the moonlight, the tan of his skin is washed out, the sharp angles of his face are heightened. Wonpil's long lashed eyes are blinking slowly, dark and dazed and always so warm.

Younghyun wonders if he's dreaming, or if _Wonpil_ is dreaming and has just managed to sleepwalk past him whilst he was enmeshed in advanced calculus.

"What are you doing out here?" Surprise and the way his stomach is turning slow somersaults in his abdomen makes his voice harsher than he wants. "It's cold."

It seems like Wonpil only now registers that he's actually here, eyes widening even further, and then — somehow, his face shutters briefly. He's normally so open, so easy to read, that this makes Younghyun's chest seize up.

"Wonpilie?" he sits down next to him and bites back another curse — the floor out here is unheated, and therefore fucking freezing. "What's wrong?"

Wonpil shakes his head mutely, front teeth pressing into his lower lip, pink and a little chapped.

Sighing, Younghyun puts an arm around him. Wonpil is so ... small, sometimes. At home, with his hair unstyled and his eyes unkohled, rumpled in his hoodie and sweatpants, he always looks vulnerable. Nothing like this strange cold image he's been told to project.

"Okay, then go back to bed? It's late and you might catch a cold."

"Mm, I'm okay. My hoodie is warm."

"My butt is cold."

"These sweats are fleece-lined."

"The perfect clothes for moping in, then," Younghyun notes drily.

This puts a little life into Wonpil, gets him a little closer to the animated whirl of motion he usually is. "I'm not moping!"

"Then what?"

"I'm just _thinking_."

Younghyun peers at him. What kind of thoughts, he wonders, is Wonpil thinking that can't be thought in the warmth of his own bed?

"About?" he prompts. "Come on, you can tell me. I can keep a secret."

"Mmm ... I _guess_ ," Wonpil says reluctantly, "I just realised, since we've debuted ..." Wonpil trails off and buries his face in his arms. "... I don't know, Sseunie said something when we ran into each other the other day..."

"Jackson?"

"Yeah. He said like, welcome to the monastery." Wonpil pauses. "Then he said, though you know what they say about monks. Then he cackled and ran back to the dance room."

"What ... do they say about monks?"

"I don't know either."

"What _kind_ of monks?"

"... I don't know! I didn't have time to ask!" Wonpil subsides a bit. "I guess he meant, with the dating ban. Then I thought about it more, because —"

Younghyun feels his spine stiffen.

This is not. This is — in the nigh six years that they've been training together, this isn't something they've ever talked about directly together. He always assumed Wonpil saved this sort of talk for Jinyoung, or his school friends in Incheon.

" — Because ... because, you know ..." Wonpil _blushes_ , and hides his face again. Even the shell of his visible ear is pink.

Younghyun tugs on it. "What?"

"Sex," Wonpil spits out, makes a noise like he's about to die, and then abruptly pulls himself back together. "But, you know, that's why monks, I guess."

"Have you seen Japanese woodblock porn?" Younghyun says drily, before his brain catches up with his tongue.

There's a pause.

"What?"

"Okay," says Younghyun. "This you have to see."

They spend the next five minutes gaping at the digitised collections hosted on the Dongguk library website.

"Isn't your university _Buddhist_?"

"So are these monks, apparently."

"Wow," Wonpil marvels. Then he glances shyly at Younghyun and quickly away. "Hyung. You've definitely ... right? You know ... university people. People in university."

And gods, like Younghyun hasn't occasionally had nightmares about his one-night-stands posting online about having slept with the bassist from JYP's new band. Not that, he imagines, many people care so far ... but if they reach their goals, then it might present a problem. Or it might present a problem for reaching their goals.

He's thought himself into a knot and been silent for too long, because Wonpil's giggling nervously, the way he does when he doesn't know what to do and wants to try and defuse a situation.

"Ah, that's an awkward question, sorry hyung, you don't have to say —"

Younghyun drops his face into his hands. They don't quite muffle the " _Yes_ " that drags out of his throat.

"Why are _you_ the embarrassed one?" Wonpil sounds a little huffy.

"I don't _know_ ," Younghyun half-whines, and tips halfway into Wonpil's shoulder.

Wonpil laughs a bit, and bumps companionably back. They sit like that, quietly looking at the moon for a while.

"It's important, though, isn't it?" Wonpil muses absently like it's an academic question, but there's a wistful note in his voice. "And if I have to wait until I'm twenty... uh, twenty-five to, well."

Younghyun can't suppress the snort. "Lots of idols sneak about, Wonpilie. And there's really no shame in it." He pauses. "Either way. I mean, you know, whether you do ... or don't ... do ... it." Why the fuck his tongue is tripping over something that he's usually fairly confident about is beyond him.

When he glances sidelong, there's a unsettling little smile tugging wryly at the corner of Wonpil's mouth. It makes him look older than he is, more world-weary than Younghyun is used to seeing from this naive dongsaeng.

"What is it?"

The smile thins out into nothing, Wonpil pressing his lips so hard together they turn white. His knuckles, too, are white where they're curved about his calves.

"Okay," Younghyun says hastily, "you don't have to tell me —"

"I think," Wonpil says quickly, almost in a mumble. "It's harder for people like me to find someone to sneak about with."

Oh. _Oh_. It hadn't even crossed Younghyun's _mind_ to think — hasn't it always been tacit knowledge? At least to anyone with two braincells to rub together. And — well. Younghyun tries to think of a way to say _I mean, I'm right here_ without making it too obvious. Or just.

"Not as hard as you may think," he says gently as he can, hoping hard that Wonpil can read between the lines, carefully not looking at him.

There's a short pause. The tension in the air, previously so palpable, abruptly dissipates when Wonpil lets out a long, low breath. Then he says, "If you're going to tell me to try sneaking about with Jinyoungie —"

"No!" Younghyun interjects. That was the _opposite_ — though — he can see why —

" — then I will hit —" Wonpil's brain finally catches up with his ears. "Oh. Well. Good. It doesn't feel safe, though, you know. And it's not like anyone ..."

Younghyun has no idea why he's doing this. "That can't be true."

"How would _you_ know?"

"We spend quite a lot of time together, Wonpilie."

"So?"

"So I know!"

"This conversation is making no sense." Wonpil snickers, shaking his head.

"I'm just _saying_ , there's no reason for you not to —"

" — and I'm saying nobody ever has —"

" — well that's just stupid —"

Wonpil makes a sound like a cat hacking up a hairball. It should be disgusting; instead it makes Younghyun want to coo.

"Stop it," he says. "You'll see, when we get out there. Anyone would."

"Right," Wonpil says disbelievingly, dry as dust and with an uncomfortable edge of something almost like bitterness, "like _you_ are offering?"

And Younghyun, damn him, had given in and reached out to tip Wonpil's chin up so he was looking at Younghyun when Younghyun said, "Yes."

—

**2018-ii**

There's a fizz in his blood that translates to overrunning playfulness or Jae-hyung going, "Oh my god Brian what is _up_ dude" or their _Remember Us_ photographer saying, "Less buzz, more cool, please, Younghyun-sshi."

"Stop flirting so hard," Sungjin says — begs, almost — when they're out of earshot of any of the album jacket shooting crew. "Discretion, please? You know?"

"The fans like it." Younghyun squints out into the bright sunlight glaring off the roofs across from theirs. It's an unseasonably warm day, and they're all sweating horribly in their layered suits. Even so, he's so far away from annoyed it may as well be a different country, but it's fun to poke at Sungjin when he's being all Leader. It's fun when every single last bit of deeply uncalled for, undeserved resentment has dissipated. There's no deeply buried jealousy for Younghyun to later feel guilty over.

Sungjin rubs a palm over his hair, cants his head in confusion as his hand pauses and — it's honestly hilarious to see how even he is still sometimes surprised by the prickle of his buzzcut, months after he'd taken the initial plunge.

"Okay, yes," Sungjin concedes, "but then Wonpilie gets all giggly and you know how he gets when he's excited and — you _encourage_ him, and I would very much like for this shoot to end as soon as possible."

"It's cute," Younghyun counters, and it's. Freeing, to just go along with Sungjin's assumption here and say what he thinks. Without having to gussy it up with irony. All those tiresome old smoke and mirrors.

Sungjin rolls his eyes expressively. "You would think so."

Shrugging with his palms held up to the high blue skies, Younghyun grins his very best shit-eating grin and says, "I do."

—

**-ii**

Or maybe the real tipping point was _after_ :

After the careful, aching, hot whole of it — the simultaneous haziness and clarity of a fever dream — the wonderful disbelief the entire time he's running his hands, his mouth over Wonpil's skin, making him pant and babble, soaking up the short, sharp sounds in the back of his throat when Younghyun opens him up, fingers shaking, and sinks into him, memorising the strong grip of those long, clever fingers on his biceps and then pressing into his shoulder blades —

After all of that, after pressing his fingers without thought to tender, slick, hot skin when he pulls out, pulling an unexpected whine and one more tremble out of Wonpil —

After Younghyun kisses Wonpil down from his high, unable to help himself since he's already trampled all over so many of the unspoken rules (the rules of one night stands; the cardinal rule of _don't shit where you eat, stupid_ ) —

Younghyun leans up on his elbow and looks down at Wonpil.

He's kind of achingly gorgeous like this: weak-limbed, sweaty, trembling. Still golden from long hours playing soccer with his friends outside in the sun. The tan will melt away soon enough, with winter and being shut away in the basement and the tender mercies of the company's panel dermatologists.

Wonpil speaks first, even though he's still catching his breath. Younghyun would have to be a better man not to be at least a little bit smug.

"Hi." His voice contracts cutely the way it does when he tries English. "Bri-hyung."

Younghyun can see the words coming and can't bear to hear them. _Thank you_ would be — just, no.

"Good?" he cuts in instead, runs a helpless hand down Wonpil's lean flank.

The sound of his laughter, more like a puff of air, warm and amused and hopefully a little amazed, makes him want to do something very inadvisable. He might anyway.

"I think," Wonpil breathes, eyelashes fluttering when Younghyun squeezes his hip. "I understand the monks in those wood cuts now."

His own laughter takes Younghyun by surprise, makes him feel drunk as a lark.

The surging urge to lean down and just — take, suckle at the pleased smile curving Wonpil's lips is what propels Younghyun out of bed. He needs to open the windows, air out the room, change his sheets, get Wonpil cleaned up —

"Hyung?" Wonpil's voice is lost and uncertain, followed by the rustling of sheets and barely concealed gasp of discomfort. "Oh. The others will be back soon, huh."

He does do the inadvisable thing, when he turns back from sliding the windows open, just in time to catch Wonpil about the waist as he staggers mid-attempt to stand up.

"Careful, careful."

Wonpil clings automatically, bare arms locking about his neck, his laughter hot against Younghyun's skin.

"I think you broke me," he says, but sounds cheerful.

"Please don't say that."

It's ... weirdly, unsettlingly easy. He hadn't really thought about this, the aftermath, the consequences, when he'd ... said yes, recklessly. When he'd had to convince Wonpil he wasn't playing a bad joke, and then when he was planning, and then when the opportunity arose and he was pressing Wonpil into his bunk.

He doesn't ... it's never been like this before.

"You have to carry me to the shower, hyungie." Wonpil flops, feet dragging when Younghyun starts walking them to the en-suite.

"What," he grunts, and tries to ignore how this would be ... totally normal banter if not for all the acres of naked skin sticking tackily together. Wonpil's skin on his. "Do you think I'm doing now."

He backs his way into the tiny bathroom, and heaves Wonpil into the shower.

"I can stand by myself," Wonpil says, whilst Younghyun leans past him and fiddles with the shower knob.

"Can you shower by yourself?" he asks, loud enough to be heard over the spray of water he aims away from both of them; it always comes out freezing cold first.

Wonpil holds his hand out for the shower head, his hair already starting to curl in the rising humidity. "I can manage, hyung." He smiles up at Younghyun, something so small and contained it's like somewhere in between Younghyun catching him and getting into the shower, something switched off inside of him. "You should go and clean up your room before Dowoonie and Jaehyungie-hyung come back."

And, ah, fuck. It really would seem like that to Wonpilie, wouldn't it? It _is_ like that, but the fact of it sits acid like vinegar in Younghyun's belly. Wonpil deserves better.

Wonpil stretches up to slot the showerhead back into its holder and bows his head under the spray. The uppermost knob of his spine is just there, for Younghyun to press his mouth to, drag an open-mouthed kiss down and —

"Okay." Younghyun backs away. "Just ... shout. If you need. Anything."

He's just finished stripping his sheets, refitting his bunk with new ones, and thoroughly cursing himself and his shitty decision-making skills, when the shower shuts off and Wonpil wanders out dripping wet and stark naked.

Considering Younghyun had been balls deep in him not even twenty minutes ago, he has no idea why this is so shocking.

"I didn't know which towel to use," Wonpil says sheepishly.

Wordlessly, Younghyun reaches into his linen drawer and hands Wonpil one. When Wonpil shivers, because the windows have are now wide open and oh _god_ — Younghyun jams a hoodie, any hoodie, over Wonpil's head.

"Yah — I'm still _wet_ ," Wonpil complains from within the depths of — oh, good job Younghyun, his own hoodie.

"You're naked and the curtains are open," Younghyun says.

"Close them." Wonpil's entire face is scrunched up in a whine when his head pops out. "It's cold and I can't smell anything but _cold_."

"You close them," Younghyun finds himself scolding, like this is just ... situation normal, like they didn't just fuck, like Younghyun can't still feel Wonpil's fingers pressed into his skin. "I have to make my bed."

He turns away to do just that, stepping up and over Jae-hyung's bed. There's a conspicuous silence behind him, and then the padding of Wonpil's feet and the windows being snicked shut.

"Oh," Wonpil says quietly, just as Younghyun's retrieving his blanket from where it'd been kicked off onto the floor. "That's where my underpants went."

Somehow, this is what makes Younghyun crack up. He laughs so hard he slides to the floor, which is cold through the thin material of his own boxers, hastily pulled on as he left the bathroom.

Wonpil sits carefully down next to him, now fully clad — he seems to have retrieved his shorts as well — and peers at him worriedly.

"I'm — fine," Younghyun gasps. "Don't — worry."

"I can't not," Wonpil says primly, but his eyes are wide and soft with ... something. "Was it." He bites his lip. "I know you didn't have to, hyung."

That tears the laughter away like nothing else could've, probably.

"What do you mean —"

" — it probably wasn't, um," Wonpil bites his lip. "As ... good ... for you?"

Younghyun stares at him.

Wonpil goes pink, just like he did when Younghyun had —

"Oh my god, Pilie," he exhales. "No. What? No. Hey. No. "

"Eloquent," Wonpil unexpectedly deadpans. It breaks the mood.

" _Yah,_ you brat, I was trying to pay you a compliment!"

His attempts to catch Wonpil — a wriggly little escape artist when he applied himself — falter when Wonpil protests, "You smell! You need a shower!"

"Rude! That's not the kind of thing you should say to a — to someone you just slept with!"

His metaphorical feet are promptly cut out from under him, though, when Wonpil shrugs and smiles, leaning into Younghyun's side. "I wouldn't know. But this is nice."

"It is, isn't it?"

Wonpil sighs. "Is it always this nice? Because my friends ..." and then he trails off, brows furrowing, and shrugs. "I think maybe it's just you that's nice, hyung."

And maybe it's because the sweat's dried sticky on his skin and Wonpil's so warm, so near, smelling like his own soap and shampoo, and Younghyun is a disaster human being who makes shitty decisions, but then his heart says: _this is nice, this will be more than you can ever get, so why not?_ And his brain's still half-recovering, so he —

He lets himself reach out again, chuck Wonpil under the chin, feel smug about the way Wonpil's lips part a little in response when his face is tilted up.

"I am," he'd said then, because he was and has always been a fucking fool, "always here to be nice for you, Wonpilie."

—

**2018-iii**

"Are you excited, hyung?"

Younghyun blinks. He feels entirely too pleasantly wrung out for excitement, and had used up the last of his energy to clean the both of them up before falling back onto the unoccupied spaces of his bed. Wonpil, as always, stretched to counter the ache in his legs and lower back, and then stayed in the sprawl. It's cute, and charming, and some kind of horrendous metaphor in which Younghyun's heart is the bed and — anyway. That's never going to make it into a song.

So no, he isn't excited. He's mostly feeling sleepily contented and wondering if Wonpil would be up to necking until someone falls asleep first. Pleasant lassitude tugging at his eyelids, he mumbles, "What am I supposed to be excited about?"

"Ah, _honestly_ , hyung," Wonpil says. "We've passed our third anniversary. Last month."

The sheer shot of adrenaline ripping its way down Younghyun's spine cannot be healthy, especially this soon after coming. His eyes wrench back open. It's only after the thrill has scoured its way through him that he realises — oh, Wonpil meant their _band's_ debut anniversary.

"I mean..." He wrenches his brain desperately back onto Wonpil's conversational track. "It's happened, and I'm happy that we've been doing music for three years... Wonpil-ah, why are we talking about work now?"

Wonpil gives him a speaking look, but Younghyun doesn't know the language of this one.

"I just meant," Wonpil sighs, "it's been _three years._ "

"...Yes, we've covered that." Younghyun wonders if it's his turn to be sex stupid today, or if Wonpil's just being that obtuse.

Wonpil makes a sound of frustration that makes Younghyun want to squeeze him. He's about to, but then Wonpil scrambles up to kneel on his bed, sitting back on his haunches.

"What else ... other than our career so far ... is three years long, hyung?"

"Uh."

Throwing his hands up in the air in clear exasperation, Wonpil doesn't wait for the thought to present itself in Younghyun's brain. "Our _dating ban_."

Realisation slams into Younghyun like a two by four made out of ice.

If Wonpil had been expecting excitement from Younghyun, he'd got the completely wrong end of the stick. He had the wrong stick altogether. In fact, he didn't even have a remotely stick-shaped thing.

"Oh," he says, stunned. "Oh. I —"

"So you don't have to stick to just me anymore," Wonpil cuts in.

He wouldn't be able to bear hearing Wonpil even implying sleeping with other people, so Younghyun interrupts back "— Wonpilie, that's not. That's just not how it was. Is."

The confusion in Wonpil's dark eyes is writ clear in the scrunch of his eyebrows and tilt of his head.

"But, if you want to, of course," he hastens to say, even if it feels like he's carving his heart out. "Of course you'd want to, um, experiment with others, right? Three years of the same thing..."

Wonpil's mouth drops open. "Hyung!" he cries. "No! I just thought — I just thought you would be happy, because now you can date without being, you know, kicked out."

Younghyun remembers having this conversation. It had been so long ago, and he'd thought he'd been very clear about not having been dating anyone. He levers himself up onto his elbows.

"Wonpilie, do you want to ... stop?"

"Stop? Oh, I mean — I ... no?" Wonpil flushes, skin already pink from exertion going even rosier. "I just — I mean." He ducks his head, eyelashes lowered. "...I wouldn't want to be selfish."

 _Be_ , Younghyun wants to scream. _Please, be selfish about me._

"So you don't want to stop," is what he manages to say instead.

Wonpil sways on the spot. "Nnnnnnooooooooooo." He twists a little from side to side as he plays with his fingers, eyes still cast low. "It's just — what if you meet someone?"

Too fast, Younghyun retorts: "What if _you_ do?"

Wonpil rolls his eyes, so heartbreakingly dismissive. For someone so determinely bright and positive, who believes and places such import on love, he has such a terribly pessimistic outlook on his own romantic prospects.

"Okay." Younghyun puts his hand over Wonpil's — their fingers are about the same length, but Wonpil's are just that tiny bit more slender, that tiny bit longer. "How about this: we both are ... happy with how things are now, right?"

"Yes." Wonpil nods. "It's nice. I'm happy."

 _Calm the fuck down_ , Younghyun tells his unruly pulse.

"Okay, good. So there's no reason to stop doing this ...until ... until things change personally for, um, either of us, okay?"

It's scary, sometimes, how clear-eyed Wonpil's gaze can be sometimes. Like it can pierce through all the veils and lies that Younghyun has wrapped around his own heart for its own protection.

All Wonpil does, though, is to smile and nod and say, "Okay."

—

**-iii**

It had been about a year into their ... arrangement when Wonpil had blindsided him with the strange leaps his brain took. Younghyun had, six years into knowing Wonpil, become used to this, as well as to the particular joys of turning surprise back on Wonpil himself. But in this particular case, his defences had been lowered, he had been understandably distracted, and thus completely unsuspecting:

"Hyung," Wonpil says in a tone that doesn't sit right with the usual bubbling rush of this sort of endeavour.

It's enough to make Younghyun slow down, even though he's got Wonpil untrousered and spread over his lap, bare thighs pressed apart by Younghyun's own. "Mmm?"

"Are you sure this is okay?" Wonpil puts his hands over Younghyun's, where they're creeping up his sides and gathering fabric along the way.

Laughing a little, Younghyun moves their hands further up Wonpil's torso together. They have to make haste, in this short window when they have a bed (Younghyun's) and everybody else is out of the dorm running errands (the hyungs), tagging along on said errantry (Dowoon), or gone home to their actual apartment (manager-hyung).

"Why wouldn't this be?"

"Why ... Gabin-sshi? Is she really okay with this?" Wonpil asks uncertainly, though he's making no great effort to stop Younghyun from rucking his shirt up.

Absently, mesmerised by the lateral stroke of his thumbs along the smooth, shallow grooves between Wonpil's lower ribs, Younghyun asks, "Who?"

"Gabin-sshi! The tech-noona at the radio show!"

Wonpil sounds agitated enough that Younghyun looks up. The words register properly, and — all Younghyun can do is stare at him blankly, hands stilling where they are. He knows who Wonpil is talking about, but what the fuck?

"You don't have to pretend with me, you know," Wonpil continues, apparently undeterred by Younghyun's silence, even as he's counterproductively pushing their hands and his t-shirt back down, since Younghyun's temporarily lost motor function. "What would be the point?"

"What...am I pretending?"

Wonpil makes a heart-wrenchingly adorable _mrrrrrgh_ of frustration. "Stop it! Just tell me if it's okay with — with whoever you're seeing right now."

But Younghyun isn't seeing anyone. He has Wonpil, and his job, and school, and very little time for anything else. He doesn't even have enough time to _sleep_.

"Wait, no, hyung!" Wonpil looks like another thought has terrifyingly struck him.

Younghyun is still working his jaw, trying to catch up to the dizzying leaps of illogic Wonpil's taking here. He likes to pride himself on being quick-witted, but being around Wonpil makes him feel like his mind is moving through molasses, sometimes.

"Hyung," says Wonpil again, eyebrows furrowing, his lower lip pushing up and out. "Are you seriously repeating mistakes? I know noona isn't a fan but we can't lose you too!"

Caught utterly flat-footed, Younghyun dumbly says, "What?"

Wonpil's mouth contracts into a moue. It's a little bit devastating, especially when this is apparently A Conversation and Younghyun hasn't got to fuck away his feelings just yet. Not that _that's_ been working, especially when the beginning and end of those feelings is also who he's fucking.

"I just mean ... our dating ban isn't over yet. What if you get caught?"

"...with ... you?" Younghyun is so lost. "That's probably a different problem from the dating ban."

"No!" Wonpil punches the mattress in frustration. "Why are you being so obtuse!"

"You're not being clear, Wonpil-ah," he says as patiently as he can, squeezing Wonpil's narrow hips.

Wonpil heaves a great sigh. "With other people! Dating! Like — like Junhyeok-hyung!"

Try as he might, Younghyun can't help the way it feels like his ribs cave in on themselves. Just momentarily.

"I — what? I'm not seeing ... wait, is that what you meant by — Wait, you think I'm seeing people _on the side_?"

There's a short, startled pause.

' _On the side_ ' is probably not the appropriate phrase to use here. He knows this is meant to be a casual arrangement, but, well, _casual_ has been more an aspiration than reality for Younghyun from the very beginning.

"Ah," Wonpil says. "So you're not —? I thought, but, wait — oh, I don't know."

"No!" Younghyun's probably gripping a little too hard in his irritation, and tries to relax his fingers. "I'm not — not anyone. At all."

Wonpil blinks at him, lips still parted.

Carefully, trying not to show his hand, Younghyun says, "That's ... why we're ... doing this, right? Because of the ... the ban." His heart burns in him, like an open wound doused with lemon juice.

"Oh." Wonpil pinks up and he casts his gaze down so that his eyes are shadowed by his lashes. "Sorry, hyung. It's just, you were being so ... you flirt so much. Not just with her, but — well. Every time we guest at the same time, I — I'm sorry I assumed."

Younghyun's heart leaps a little. How it manages to do that and plunge into the bottom of his stomach at the same time is a paradox not even the smartest scientist could solve, probably.

"Aigoo, Wonpilie," he coos, overcompensating; he tips Wonpil down onto the bed so he can lie over him, press them together from belly to hips to thighs. "Were you _jealous_?"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaah," Wonpil exhales hard, and wiggles harder when he realises Younghyun won't let him up. "You're so annoying, hyung."

"Are you too annoyed to do anything now?" Younghyun teases, easing back into normalcy with relief. For emphasis, he rolls his hips into Wonpil's; he's been half-hard this whole time, even with the emotional rollercoaster Wonpil has unwittingly dragged him through. "We might not actually have time left."

Wonpil's eyes have gone a little out-of-focus, at the drag and friction, and he eases a leg out to hitch over the back of Younghyun's thigh. "I don't care," he says, voice already getting breathy and pitchy.

So — Younghyun doesn't get to take Wonpil apart the way he had wanted to, but this is good too: rutting against each other, with his jeans half shoved down his thighs and Wonpil's shorts caught around one ankle. It's messy and rushed and wonderful, and ends all too soon. Just soon enough.

For some reason, Wonpil is like a dog with a bone. He's dressed and sitting cross-legged at the end of Younghyun's bunk, hugging the long body pillow while Younghyun gets into comfortable home clothes.

"But you want to, don't you?" he asks, and as though he knows Younghyun's currently experiencing a divide-by-zero error like a physical sensation, elaborates: "Date?"

Younghyun's grateful his back is turned while he composes himself. Or at least his face.

But then he turns around, and there Wonpil is, in the shadowy cocoon of his bunk, looking like he owns it, turning his big, curious eyes up at Younghyun. The light in the room reflects off them, makes his gaze brighter than it already is.

Truth half-tears herself out of him.

"It's not —" he chokes on the words clogging his throat, unsure of how to parse out a safe truth from them. "I'm not interested in dating — not. Not for its own sake."

Wonpil, who sometimes seems more in love with the notion of love itself, frowns at him in confusion.

"It doesn't seem nice to you? To hold hands with someone and ..." Wonpil trails off, and picks at a loose thread on Younghyun's blanket. "Just have someone who you can count on to say good morning to you every day, and good night. To miss you whenever you aren't together."

"Of course it does," Younghyun sighs, wondering why and when he became such a masochist. He folds himself into his bunk too, sitting at the head of his bed instead of next to Wonpil. "But I'm not going to ... I'll date — I'd want to date someone because of them, not because of ... dating." He snorts, unable to help himself. "Not that we'd have the time to, even if we were allowed."

There's another pause that sets Younghyun's heart sinking like a stone. It shouldn't matter, what Wonpil thinks of this, because — what are the chances, anyway? He'd chosen to take this gamble: better to know than not, better to have loved and lost. Though, of course, he hasn't quite worked out what to do when the loving and losing happen in the same breath.

Then Wonpil smiles at him, small but true. "That's very romantic, hyung. You're the true romantic in this band, aren't you?"

_Oh, Wonpilie_ , Younghyun had thought then, even as he'd smiled sheepishly back. _You have no fucking clue_.

—

**2018-iv**

The reminder that their ban is over lights a fire up under his ass. It's the fire of desperation, fuelled by the twinned knowledge that Wonpil is very summarily over his early crush on their leader, and the fear that he might lose even this much of what he has of Wonpil any day now.

It makes him less careful, makes him less able to tamp things down.

"Wonpilie," he says, and means _sweetheart_ , means _baby_.

Sometimes it feels like Wonpil knows it; like he can hear every sweet nothing laden on Younghyun's tongue, every pet name he wants to let trip off.

But then Wonpil glances away, laughs at something else, someone else, or just — does the thing where he switches off, sometimes, and looks a little blank and sad. Which everyone is allowed to be of course; no one can be perpetually sunny. But seeing Wonpil like that hurts, and Younghyun is always seized by the irrational desire to shield him from any hurt ever, to make him laugh and clap and stamp his feet, the way he does when he's carried away by merriment.

And Younghyun thinks this is good, this is fine, he can just silently love him from right next to him.

The problem is that Wonpil soaks up affection like a sponge, like a plant absorbing sunshine and then ... the metaphor might start falling apart here. Or not, because he takes that affection and synthesises it into his own unique brand of Wonpilie affection — doles it out in spades, whether you like it (Dowoonie, Younghyun) or not (the hyungs, who are merely pretending).

Hope's blooming in his chest now anyway, crawling vines twining around his ribs, up his throat, threatens to unseat all the stupid things from where he's pushed them down: too heavy with affection, too much of his heart in them.

"Dude," Jae says after reading the drafted lyrics Younghyun has written for one of his and Wonpil's co-compositions. "Brian, you ... got it bad, huh?"

"Is it that obvious?" He does not panic. Not at all. His voice stays completely level. He's so in control.

"You look at Wonpilie like ... " Jae trails off, tapping one long finger against the table top in thought. "I want to say like you want to eat him alive, but that's like ... too carnal for what's going on here."

Younghyun digests this; he's always heard that his eyes are too vulpine, his gaze too cold, and he's worked _hard_ to remedy that. When he reads the fan reactions online to the results of his efforts, he's always caught between embarrassed pleasure and the strong feeling that he's overcorrected.

He can't help smiling at the people he's fond of, and there's no one that makes him warm all over with fondness like Wonpil.

Jae shrugs. "I mean, it's good. It's always good. Your lyrics, I mean."

"And the feelings?" Younghyun asks drily.

Shrugging and holding his palms up, Jae flattens his lips and raises his eyebrows, all "Who knows; certainly not I".

Sighing, Younghyun takes the point.

—

**-iv**

They couldn't have hoped to hide it for very much longer.

Not when privacy was scarce, and time to themselves even scarcer.

It didn't help that the first time they'd done anything anywhere risky, they hadn't got caught.

"It's soundproofed." Younghyun huffs a wry laugh while locking the door behind him. "But not that soundproof, so no screaming, okay, Wonpilie?"

Wonpil squints at him from the piano bench, looking deeply unimpressed. And then he smiles, bright and challenging. "You sound so sure of yourself."

"You're noisy." Younghyun takes the few steps from the door to stand between Wonpil's spread knees. He bends down, can't help the smile when his ears catch Wonpil's tiny little inhale, and reaches behind Wonpil to shut the piano lid. "You made so much noise the first time we fucked I'm amazed the neighbours didn't complain."

Wonpil huffs and puffs his cheeks out in a pout, turning his face away.

"Ah, come on." Younghyun teases, poking at one cheek. "I didn't say I don't like it."

"That's too bad," Wonpil says at last, blowing out all the air in his cheeks and turning to look Younghyun, eyes curved a little in mischief. It isn't quite enough warning for what he says next. "I was going to say you could gag me, then."

It's like all the air disappears from Younghyun's lungs in that moment. His head spins a little from how fast blood has rushed into his cock.

"Jesus," he says, "Maybe I _should_ , just to stop you from ... from shocking me like that."

"I'm not some blushing innocent, hyung." Wonpil is starting to sound actually annoyed now.

"Oh, I know that," Younghyun murmurs, electing not to point out that he very much blushes, and very prettily too. He leans in for the kind of kiss that demonstrates exactly Wonpil's point and ends with Wonpil bent back over the shut piano and his thighs cinched tight about Younghyun's hips as they rut against each other.

"Didn't — you have a — a plan?" Wonpil gasps into the hot, humid air between them when they have to part for oxygen.

Groaning, Younghyun buries his face in the join of Wonpil's neck and shoulder, trying to make himself calm down. Then he slides to his knees and presses Wonpil's legs further apart.

"Oh," Wonpil says faintly. His hands thump down onto the edge of the bench, fingers curling over the ledge of it.

"Yeah." Younghyun grins up at him, trying to project as much confidence as he can as he slides his palms up the silky smooth material of Wonpil's shorts to the waistband. "I have a lesson plan."

The whisper of his shorts as Younghyun drags them down narrow hips is accompanied by another overwhelmed _"Oh"_. Wonpil lifts his ass when Younghyun nudges, and the shorts are soon pooled around Wonpil's ankles.

Wonpil is barely breathing.

Younghyun laughs and runs a hand up one taut calf, digs a thumb into the swell of muscle there. "Breathe, Wonpilie."

Wonpil drags in a shuddery breath, and then chokes on his exhale when Younghyun leans in, and mouths at the hot line of him through his underwear.

Sometime in between Younghyun getting rid of Wonpil's underwear and sliding his mouth hot and wet down and over Wonpil's cock, Wonpil's fingers have twined their way into his hair. It hurts a little, in a way that sends a zing down his spine; when he sucks hard the fingers clench and he can't help but moan — it's echoed over him, the reflexive jerk of Wonpil's hips barely held in place by Younghyun's grip on his thighs.

Pulling back off, he looks up at Wonpil, whose eyes are wide and a little wet, whose mouth is bitten red and hanging open. Gods, he can't _wait_ —

"Not so loud, Wonpilie," Younghyun chides; the roughness already in his own voice surprises himself.

So is Wonpil; the flash in his eyes makes Younghyun go hot all over.

But all Wonpil says is, "Yes, hyung" and bite his bottom lip.

He wants to say _good boy_ , but holds himself back, with curling his fingers over the cut of Wonpil's hipbones and filling his mouth so he can't talk. Younghyun bobs his head, sucking harder on the upstroke, listening for Wonpil's choked-off noises and how they're getting more and more uneven. He frees up one hand and encircles the base of Wonpil's cock, gently twisting his wrist in time with the way he's working Wonpil over with his mouth.

"Oh, fuck," Wonpil gasps; his head thumps with a hollow _thunk_ against the piano.

When Wonpil's airy little moans start getting a little too loud, he raises his hand, looking up through his sweaty hair to tap at Wonpil's lips. He can't help but groan a little, jeans getting painfully tight, when Wonpil laps his fingers right in, sucks at them like a promise.

"I think," he pulls off and says, laughing hoarsely as he drags his fingers out of Wonpil's mouth and pushes them back in again, watching Wonpil watch him with those big, anticipatory eyes, watching Wonpil let Younghyun fuck his mouth with his fingers. "I think you don't really need this demonstration, do you?"

Mouth occupied, Wonpil can only shake his head and make frantic, high noises in the back of his throat.

He can imagine Wonpil whining _don't be mean, hyung_ , and laughs again.

"Okay, but you have to keep quiet, Pil-ah."

Wonpil nods earnestly, eyes swallowing dark with desire and desperation; his hips twitch, and his cock jumps when Younghyun presses down on his tongue with the pads of his fingers. _Jesus_.

He presses wet, sucking kisses up along the underside of Wonpil's cock, dragging his thumb up through the mess of saliva and precome in his mouth's wake, and then — after an interlude of sucking tenderly at the hot, slippery, faintly bitter head — dragging it back down ahead of his lips, sealed tight around Wonpil.

" _Hyung_ ," Wonpil slurs around the fingers in his mouth. "I can't —"

Younghyun would smile if he could. Instead he takes his hand back so he can run his fingers, slick with Wonpil's spit, along Wonpil's taint and pressing in and massaging until Wonpil's trembling hard under his hands, tensed up so much he's half-curled over as his right foot kicks out. He does actually manage not to make too much noise when he comes, whining high and thin and broken.

Then he tugs Younghyun up by his hair. It kind of hurts but that gets lost in how insistent Wonpil is on kissing, open-mouthed and desperate, as he sucks Younghyun's tongue into his own mouth, licks the taste of himself right out of Younghyun's mouth.

"You broke me," Wonpil accuses, a familiar refrain by now. This time it comes out in an airy growl that loses weight when Younghyun tucks his hands under Wonpil's ass, fingers curling into the hot press between his cheeks, spreading a little before just _holding_. "Oh!" His gasp hitches into a moan, " _Hnnnnn_ , plea— Oh...but..."

Squeezing, Younghyun laughs, punch-drunk with pleasure. "Not now, Pilie, this is a lesson, remember? We have an _objective_."

"I'm —" Wonpil hiccups when Younghyun squeezes again. He's so needy, so eager to be fucked, Younghyun almost forgets about the point of this entire venture. Tipping forward into Younghyun's shoulder, Wonpil complains, "I can't do anything like this, hyung."

"That's fine." Younghyun murmurs, nuzzling at his sweaty temple. "Guess I have to take responsibility for _breaking you_."

Wonpil bites the bare skin of Younghyun's neck. "Don't be so arrogant."

He laughs, gets another unwilling moan out of Wonpil with another squeeze, and kisses him on one high cheekbone. "You said it, not me. We can make out til you — mmf!" He chokes on his saliva when Wonpil vengefully skims a hand down his front to squeeze his aching dick where it's tenting his jeans, dampening the faded wash to a dark blue.

"You're so annoying sometimes, hyung." Wonpil knocks Younghyun's arms away from around him and slides off the bench onto his knees. "Okay, your turn. I'll show you."

Stroppy Wonpil is so _cute_.

He can't help smiling down at Wonpil's narrowed eyes. "Show me?"

"What I've learnt." Wonpil pops Younghyun's fly open.

No one could ever accuse of Wonpil not being a quick learner, at least when it came to, ah, hands-on learning. Or him of not having a mouth made for sucking cock. He's enthusiastic, and sloppy, and puts that long practised pout to good use. Fuck, his mouth feels so _good_.

It's Younghyun's turn to bang his own head against the piano as he breathes hard, hands gripping his own thighs. He's been turned on for so long it feels like he might come any moment, which would — be embarrassing.

" _Fuck,_ " he gasps out when Wonpil starts trying to use his tongue for more than just pressing flat up against the underside of his cock. "Pil-ah." He drops his chin, gaze swinging back down to see — Wonpil between his thighs, that wide mouth stretched red and spit-shiny around his dick, big brown eyes so eager to please gazing up at him through bangs matted with sweat.

He jerks in response to the visual, and feels the head of his cock hit the back of Wonpil's throat, feels Wonpil's reflexive swallow, and then Wonpil chokes, and whines through his nose even as Younghyun backs off.

"Sorry, sorry." He cards his fingers through Wonpil's hair. "You just —" The word fail him when Wonpil slides his lips back round him, to — fuck, Younghyun did _not_ teach him this — suckle gently at the head, tongue tracing maddening patterns against the sensitive glans that make his navel clench. Wonpil's eyelids have fallen shut, and his eyelashes long and dark are fluttering against his flushed cheeks; he's so pretty, so, so fucking pretty.

"Pilie," he moans helplessly, and lets his fingers trail to cup Wonpil's jaw, hold his head in place to slide in deeper. This time, Wonpil takes it without much fuss, tongue pressed to the thick vein running along the underside of his dick, breathing through Younghyun doing his best to control the rolling of his hips and not bruise Wonpil's throat. His mouth is so hot, so wet, all sloppy, over-eager suction but so fucking hot —

"Fuck, you —"

The questioning noise that Wonpil makes in the back of his throat, seemingly still blissed out on sucking Younghyun's brain out through his cock, feels so fucking good; he can feel his balls drawing up tight.

"Oh god," he pants, fingers locked in Wonpil's soft, unstraightened curls. "Fuck, Wonpilie, you're doing so well."

Wonpil moans unexpectedly, the vibration and rippling of his throat is a gut-punch. Younghyun chokes on air and jerks hard before pulling Wonpil off him a little too late; his come lands half in Wonpil's mouth, and half on Wonpil's face. It's ... a lot, Wonpil's startled face: big eyes still a little glazed over, swollen lips parted, pink face streaked white.

"Fuck, you look so — "

And then Wonpil's scrunching his face up as it visibly registers what's just happened ... on him, and Younghyun can't help but laugh because he's so _cute_ , even debauched like this.

"— hyung," Wonpil complains, "Gross. This ..." he reflexively swallows, coughs, and grimaces. "Ugh. Water!"

Giddy, Younghyun picks Wonpil up and puts him on the bench, gives him water, cleans his face up (this earns him another 'Ugh!"') and tucks himself back into his jeans.

Even with all that, with red swollen lips and Wonpil's mussed hair, they didn't get caught. That time.

So maybe they got a little too secure, a little too confident, a little too carried away, because Wonpil catches Younghyun off guard with a condom and lube one night and, well. He's very bad at saying no to Wonpil at the best of times, as it is, and when Wonpil is eager and determined _and_ looks so beautiful when he's spread out and pressed up against the wall? Perish the thought.

They were wrong when they thought they'd be the only ones left in the basement this late — at least on this side of the basement; the idols dance themselves into the ground all the time — because they emerge from the piano room, Wonpil muffling nervous laughter into the back of Younghyun's jacket, arms hugging him about the waist, and Younghyun doing his desperate best to wipe all helpless fondness off his own face, only to see Jae locking up their practice room.

"Oh," Younghyun mutters, low for Wonpil to hear, "fuck."

Jae looks up from checking the door and Younghyun sees the _exact moment he twigs_ : that quizzical look melting into dawning realisation.

"Oh," says Jae, "my god."

The loss of warmth as Wonpil's arms drop from around him has Younghyun glancing down to check on Wonpil. The flush of exertion has entirely drained away from Wonpil's cheeks; he's gone white and stiff with panic, and he's clutching at his own fingers.

"Jae-hyung," says Younghyun as quietly as he can. "When did you come back?"

"When did I come _back_? After _dinner_? But you clearly didn't notice because —" Jae falters. "Because —"

And Younghyun can see the exact moment Jae realises they weren't just making out.

"Wait, did you guys —" Jae's face screws up into a wrinkly grimace. He backs about five steps away from them. It's completely unnecessary, because he's _all the way down the corridor_. "In there?"

The colour's returning to Wonpil's face. "Hyung, is that really what you're focussing on?"

"The piano room??? Trainees go in there sometimes!!! The babies!!!"

"We...we'll air it out," Younghyun says weakly.

"But —" Wonpil says at the same time, confused and hopeful at the same time, because he's just that trusting a person.

"Defilers! Of Youth!" Jae whisper-shrieks. And then looks about himself wildly. "Oh my god! You two!!! We are going to talk about this back at home!!!!"

As they're shivering in the bus stop, which is empty but for the three of them, Wonpil asks in such a small voice he can barely be heard over the wind. "You don't mind, Jae-hyung?"

Younghyun wishes to god he could just tuck Wonpil into his side — for warmth, for comfort, for _himself_.

"Mind?" Jae asks blankly. "What — oh. Wonpilie, no. I mean — have you done it in my bed? Seriously. Have you? I don't think I could ever forgive you —"

"No!" Wonpil puffs up momentarily in indignation, before the wind howls past and he shrinks back into a hunch. "Ew, no."

"Well then," Jae says magnanimously. "Just keep it away from common spaces and _where actual children practise_ and we'll be fine. Right, Bribri?"

"You know my bed is right next to yours, right?" Younghyun asks, for lack of anything else to say.

Snow gusts into the bus stop, and Wonpil leans into his side, having evidently given up. They're all so muffled and wrapped up it would take a super genius spy to recognise them, anyway.

"I might've sat on your bed before showering," Wonpil tells Jae guiltily, even as he tries to tuck himself more firmly against Younghyun.

Jae's face as he looks at them is a melange of so many different emotions, Younghyun can't pick them apart.

"First: Wonpilie, that's gross, please never do that again. Second: Brian, I am trying very hard not to think about that." And then before either of them can make a response, Jae perks up. "Oh! Our bus!"

—

**2018 - v**

He was bound to slip up at some point.

Of course it happens the same way this all began, with his damn fool mouth running itself when his head's entirely fuzzed over with endorphins and the sheer pleasure of Wonpil searing and tight around him.

When they're moving together like this, the usual boundaries that Younghyun at least tries to maintain in his mind dissolve into the sheer sensation of skin on skin, heat and sweat and the slick filthy slap of his balls against Wonpil's skin. It's disinhibiting in the best and worst ways, where the physical dissolves into the mental.

Groaned "Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ "s punctuate Younghyun's hoarse pants as he struggles to maintain the rhythm of his hips: short sharp snaps in and long, slow drags out. His eyes have squeezed themselves shut in an attempt to focus.

There's a palm on his cheek; he blinks his eyes open. Wonpil's gaze is unexpectedly lucid, if a little glassy, and his aegyo-sal are showing a little.

"You - ah, _ah_ ," Wonpil manages to say around barely aspirated moans, "— doing really, ah, well, hyung." He giggles at the way Younghyun exhales roughly and briefly loses the tempo when that sends a burst of pleasure, unrelated to the way his entire body is tensed on the edge of orgasm, through him. The corners of Wonpil's eyes wrinkle with mischief. "But d- _oh_ , don't throw out your back."

Despite everything — despite the exasperation, the fatigue setting in and the burn in his arms and thighs — he can't help but turn his face to kiss Wonpil's palm. Distantly, this registers as possibly too tender, too telling.

"My back" — he gives up on maintaining the stroke and just buries his cock, dirty and deep, with one emphatic stroke — "is fine, brat."

Wonpil's fingers curl and press into his cheek; his eyes have fallen shut again and his mouth has dropped open as he squirms against Younghyun, hips shifting restlessly up and into against the rolling grind.

"Ah, fuck," Younghyun grunts, and gently lowers Wonpil's thighs down from his shoulders. He pulls Wonpil further up into his lap to lean further down and kiss Wonpil hard without spraining him. Wonpil's feet land on the mattress and almost immediately his knees flop outward.

"Such a pretty picture," he murmurs when he leans back up just to ... to look, from where Wonpil is stretched around him to the sweet curve of Wonpil's cock against his belly, the shiny spots where it's leaked all over his skin, the faint flush spread all over his chest and —

"Fuck," he breathes without quite thinking, "you're so fucking sexy, sweetheart."

The endearment registers in his ears before it's even half out of his mouth and his heart stutters in his chest, ice suddenly crystallising in his veins.

But Wonpil's still rubbing his face against the pillow and whining quietly, fingers scrabbling against the sheets.

He thinks perhaps Wonpil is too lost to notice, but no — the word was just percolating, apparently, because Wonpil's eyes fly open and he stares at Younghyun in shock.

It's enough to make Younghyun still.

"No!" Wonpil's face scrunches up in protest; he cinches his thighs in around Younghyun's hips and digs his heels into the small of Youngyun's back. "Don't — go _harder_."

Desperation and desire are natural bedfellows; they transmute into a burst of adrenaline that helps him drives his cock over and over into Wonpil, short, shallow, and brutal at an angle that's definitely on the other side of _too much_ ; there are tears starting in the corners of Wonpil's eyes and he's gone absolutely soundless, mouth open as his chest rises and falls rapidly. Younghyun's about to back off, slow down, but then Wonpil's arching off the bed and coming hard with a high, broken sob, and the hard clench of him is enough to drag Younghyun after him.

He thinks maybe he managed to fuck his mistake out of Wonpil's memory, but Wonpil's giving him an uncharacteristically unreadable look from under his lashes when Younghyun passes him a damp hand towel to clean up with.

"You usually do this for me," he says quietly, with only a trace of a playful pout. There isn't a trace of his usual sleepy fucked-out daze, tonight.

Summoning up a grin for him, Younghyun takes the towel back. "So I do."

They usually banter in the afterglow, but Younghyun doesn't have it together enough to even make an attempt at retaining some semblance of normality. So the clean up happens in silence that's punctuated only by Wonpil's hitched breaths and the soothing nonsense that Younghyun murmurs on learnt reflex when he runs the towel in between Wonpil's thighs.

Younghyun literally can't remember a time they've spent in such uncomfortable silence together.

"Thanks, hyung," Wonpil murmurs, with a brief touch to his wrist when Younghyun finishes.

And on a completely novel note, he gets to his feet.

"Ah, Wonpil...ie? What do you need? I can —"

"Just my clothes, hyung." Wonpil yawns hugely as he wobbles in search of them. "It's cold. Ah, my pants."

Younghyun slumps half-clothed on the edge of his bed, trying not to panic, as he watches Wonpil pull his sweatpants back on, and his t-shirt after. This is okay, Wonpil likes sleeping with clothes on. Especially now that the leaves has started to turn. He shuffles to sit up properly and check if he needs to change his sheets — Wonpil hates sleeping in any vaguely damp spots — when Wonpil also puts his hoodie back on.

His face, when it pops back into view, has a small, stiff smile on it.

The knots that Younghyun's stomach has twisted into tighten further.

"You —" It's not like there's any obligation; it's just that neither of them has bothered sneaking back to their own room in a long time. Their members barely blink at seeing them emerge from each other's rooms in the mornings, these days.

A complicated look flashes over Wonpil's face. The white blond of his hair for their upcoming comeback makes the angles of his face look harsher, an alien cold. Even with his hair tousled and matted down one side like this, it's unsettling. Or maybe that's just this whole situation, because Wonpil's eyes are still the same.

He's padding closer, and leaning down. Why does this feel so much like a goodbye?

Wonpil presses a hard kiss to Younghyun's mouth, murmurs, "I want my own bed tonight. See you tomorrow, Younghyunie-hyung."

—

**-v**

The thing about sleeping exclusively with someone for so long — because of circumstance; because of his own abysmal impulses; because of his chronic inability to say no to Wonpil, especially when Wonpil stands close enough that he has to peer up at Younghyun through his lashes and gives him those specific cow eyes —

The thing about that this state of affairs, plus his existing weaknesses, plus the miserably exhilarating fact that he and Wonpil do get along very well outside of their sexual chemistry, means that —

It means that they learn things about each other that Younghyun hopes to the _gods_ no one else is privy to. It means that Younghyun's managed to give away more of himself than he realises. Not the most essential secret, he hopes, but —

It means that Wonpil catches him unawares when they're out on an evening stroll by the Han, having just passed far too many lovey-dovey couples whispering sweet nothings to each other under the cherry blossom trees, laden with pink and white. Sometimes the couples only _think_ they're whispering.

"You like the sound of it, don't you?" Wonpil says absently, when they're a safe distance away from the last loudly affectionate pair. He isn't even looking at Younghyun.

"The...what?" Even after all this times, it takes him at least a minute to follow to Wonpil's trains of thought.

Wonpil stops in his tracks, swinging round into Younghyun's path so that they end up barely an inch apart, chest to chest.

He's about to take a step back — they're in public — when Wonpil gives him those specifically meaningful cow eyes and murmurs, " _Oppa_."

He says it like a secret, like he's delivering a present, except the present is wrapped in mischief and gilt with provocation.

It hits Younghyun's bloodstream like a bolt of lightning. This is not something he's ever had to negotiate before.

"I —" he has to pause to clear his throat.

Wonpil's lips quirk up. "Nobody's in the dorm now, I think."

The smile that he gives Younghyun makes his gut twist with desire.

Younghyun turns to take one of the tracks that lead back to the main road, and thus to their dorm. Shaking with quiet giggles, Wonpil lets himself be herded along.

The stolen afternoon of mutual discovery and Younghyun learning what it's like to witness Wonpil come while giggling, so unexpected but so fruitful, seems to blow the floodgates wide open.

He never gets quite used to Wonpil slyly whispering _Oppa_ into his ear, or shakily whimpering it in desperate need, or — or sing-songing it whenever he wants something.

It's basically inevitable that Wonpil forgets himself, one pre-caffeinated winter morning, and whines " _Oppa_ , help me get my milk from the fridge, I forgot" in full hearing of the unfortunate Jae.

Dowoonie is here too, but he's face down on the kitchen table and dead to the world.

The problem is probably that whilst nobody in their right mind would think Wonpil meant anyone but Younghyun, he — also pre-caffeinated — just grumbles, "God, keep the princessing for the pillows, Pilie," whilst pulling the fridge door he'd just shut back open.

The loud clink of Jae's mug against the metal dishrack clears the sleep fog in Younghyun's mind so fast, he thinks he's achieved the clarity of nirvana for a nanosecond. He considers just hiding in the fridge forever.

But no, there's the electricity bill to think of, and the congratulatory cookies that Dowoon's mum sent them when she heard Younghyun was _finally done with school_.

He emerges, Wonpil's goddamn carton of milk in hand, to see Wonpil crouched over with his face buried in his hands.

"... I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that," Jae announces into the frozen, mortified silence. "We. Just. We have to leave in 30 minutes, guys. Someone wake Dowoonie up."

He stalks out of the kitchen back to the bedrooms.

Nervous giggling emerges from behind Wonpil's fingers — he's still half-squatting, propped up against the wall — as Jae's back disappears around the corner.

"I — uh," Younghyun swallows hard. "I'll talk to him."

"Shouldn't we just let him pretend?" Wonpil's finally raised his head. There's a tilt to his embarrassed smile that Younghyun can't quite parse. "Wouldn't that be ... kinder for everyone?"

"...Maybe." Taking the few steps to the kitchen table, Younghyun puts the fucking carton of milk down and reaches to pull Wonpil up. "Let's just eat breakfast for now. And make sure Dowoonie wakes up."

*

He corners Jae a few days later, some vague plan to beg him not to blackmail them half-coalesced in his mind. Younghyun's usually got things mapped out better than this, but this had been private and — well.

"Oh god, no," says Jae. "Please, no, I do not want to talk about it."

"You're not gonna spread the pain?"

"In this case I think a burden shared is not halved but multiplied."

"You don't have to make it sound so —"

"Oh my god, hey, no." Jae abruptly shifts his weight forward and almost falls off the lone chair they have in their room. "Bribri, no, I'm so happy for you guys! Super happy!"He ignores the reflexively disbelieving noise Younghyun makes. "Look, you're comfortable with each other's, uh, kinks! You don't have sex in the common areas! Or my bed — or I'll kill you both, just watch me — and I never sit on your bunk! You're in a stable relationshi—i—ip?"

Younghyun's purported resting cold face is apparently not doing its job, because Jae's voice goes up in question at the end when he sees how it's twisted.

"Are you...not?"

Taking a leaf out of Wonpil's book, Younghyun shakes his head mutely.

"...what? I'm so confused."

Panic streaks its way down Younghyun's spine. He'd ... he's never really paused to think about what the members assume is between Wonpil and him, beyond their acceptance of the. The situation. To him, it's so obvious that there isn't anything more to it, no matter how much he yearns. Wonpil doesn't treat him any differently outside of bed, not that he can notice.

"We're ..." he sighs and sits down on the foot of Jae's bed. "We're just friends, hyung."

Jae squints at him, before moving over to fold himself on the middle of his bed, like some kind of relationship guru Boddhisattva.

"Brian, I love and support you, but like ... are you sure this is just a friends-with-benefits situation?"

Heaving a sigh, Younghyun says, "Yes. The — ban, you know."

Jae squints harder. "This doesn't seem like —" he cuts himself off, but Younghyun knows what he was going to say:

_This doesn't seem like a Wonpilie thing_.

Which it isn't, technically, since Younghyun's the one who proposed...everything, and Wonpil went along with it. And they have a good time, so, really.

"Honestly?" Jae asks, but it's obviously rhetorical, so Younghyun stays quiet. "This doesn't seem like something _either_ of you would do. And the way that you treat — " He peers hard at Younghyun, who squirms and tries not to just hide in his hands. "Bruh, you _like_ him."

Caught out, Younghyun's mind goes unhelpfully blank. "I, uh, I —" he stammers, casting about for something clever to say, to deflect with.

"Oh, _damn_ ," Jae breathes. "Damn. I'd tell you that you need to cut that shit out, but that just isn't going to happen, right?"

Giving up, Younghyun shakes his head mutely again.

Jae shakes his head too, smiling ruefully. "Bri...this is such a bad idea, like fuck. Okay, you know that. Obviously."

"Obviously," Younghyun parrots. His voice is as dry as the Gobi desert.

Shuffling closer on his bum, Jae reaches out one long, skinny arm to tug Younghyun into a side hug. "Okay, well. I guess I'm here to support you no matter what. And that I'm rooting for you."

The burning feeling swelling under his ribs rises in his throat. To his horror, Younghyun finds himself laughing wetly. "Hyung, I'm not — there's nothing to root for."

"Fuck that," Jae says easily, and punches him with his free hand. "You're gonna make Wonpilie fall in love with you, if he hasn't yet, which shouldn't be hard since you guys are...you guys, and then it's gonna be — oh my god, no, it's gonna be _even worse_."

He stops in horror and lets go of Younghyun so he can fully, bodily express his horror. It's so exaggerated, so calculated, that Younghyun can't help but start laughing again despite the dragging despair.

—

**2018-vi**

The typical signs of being avoided by someone hurt even more when you live with that someone. Wonpil gives him long, thoughtful looks when he thinks Younghyun isn't paying attention, which is honestly ridiculous. There's some part of Younghyun that's always at least a little aware of where Wonpil is in relation to him.

Younghyun wonders if it wouldn't be better just to confess it all, like lancing a wound. Maybe this has festered too long. Maybe he should just get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness; for the false pretences. But then there is the scrunch of Wonpil's eyebrows, the way the sad faraway look that Wonpil sometimes gets seems to be an almost permanent fixture on his face now, and the way he doesn't seem to know what to do whenever they're in the same room. The troubled pout smoothing into careful blankness is worse than direct digust, but that's never been Wonpil's style.

It's — all Younghyun wants to see him do is smile, even if it isn't at _Younghyun_ himself.

In the end, it's Wonpil who knocks on his door and slips in.

Here is another break in the pattern they've established over the past three years, because he isn't smiling, nor freshly showered, nor playfully flirtatious.

Instead, his eyes are — already wet? What?

"Wonpilie," he can't help but be moved to ask, "what's—"

"I'm so so _so_ sorry for using you, hyung," Wonpil blurts out, "I should've — I never realised — and, and —"

He's — oh god — he's actually welling up and this is the worst thing ever because Younghyun never wanted him to be hurt, never thought he could be hurt just because Younghyun's a fucking fool.

"No," he interrupts, hands aching to reach out and touch Wonpil. Who's leaning back against the shut door like it's the only thing keeping up, or like he can't wait to get out of the room. Which Younghyun can understand; he wishes he could get out of his own body right now. "No, I'm sorry for using you, you couldn't have known and I just ..."

This is fucking excruciating.

"But we've been friends for so long," Wonpil says, quiet and small, looking down at his feet. "I should've ... shouldn't I have been able to tell?"

What is there that Younghyun can say to that? That he should've told him right from the very start? Likely none of this would ever happened, then. And who might Wonpil have tried going to instead? And to what possible disastrous consequences? He can't imagine what it's like _not_ to have Wonpil's bright presence in his life, except he can, because Wonpil's been so subdued over the past few days that the members have started giving them meaningful looks.

They look at each other helplessly, Wonpil already sniffling and Younghyun feeling a tell-tale pang deep in his nose.

He's too scared, even now, to ask what this means. He never really got to confess, not in the way he'd just been thinking about. He never got to court Wonpil the way he'd inchoately been planning somewhere deep in the back of his mind, since he'd asked that question that got him into this mess a mere few weeks ago.

"I didn't say anything either," Younghyun settles on. "I — Wonpil-ah," he says helplessly, entirely bereft of the means to cut through his tangled thoughts. "I never meant for you to —"

Wonpil's eyes snap up to meet his, wide and dark. He's always been honest and frank with his feelings, comfortingly easy to read. Younghyun has seen Wonpil in all sorts of moods by now, has been privy to expressions that only _he_ has ever put on Wonpil's face. But now there is such a tempest in his gaze and on his face that Younghyun can't pick anything out.

"You never...?" his voice trembles.

"I mean ..." The sour, seething knot under Younghyun's sternum gives his voice a touch of unwelcome asperity. "What good has it done?"

The way that Wonpil's mouth falls open makes Younghyun want to punch himself in the face.

"I..." Wonpil bites his lip. "Hyung, please just ... I —"

He's picking his words so carefully, it's like he's talking to a camera.

Not sure if he wants to hear it, Younghyun tells him, "You don't have to —"

"No, I — I just need ... time, hyung."

He'd entirely been expecting to just hear _sorry_. To hear, _I can't_.

This might actually be worse. Like one of those matryoshka dolls: hope wrapped in disappointment wrapped in hope. Because Wonpil's kind, one of the kindest people whom Younghyun knows, but he is also straightforward and wouldn't be so cruel as to drag this torture out unnecessarily if he didn't. Actually need time to ... to think, apparently.

"Of course," he says, ever the helpless fool.

He sound empty even to his own ears. He watches Wonpil's interlocking fingers where he's got his hands clapsed together in front of him twist and untwist in that old, familiar nervous tic.

"Okay," Wonpil whispers, "um. I ... I'll go now, hyung? I'll just ... go."

Younghyun watches him edge back out of the door, and the way it carefully, quietly snicks shut, before sighing and falling back onto his bed and pressing his fingertips into his own eyes.

What a fucking mess he's made of things.

The thing that might hurt most is that they have always been friends, first and foremost, and he isn't sure if even that will survive this particular cataclysm. Maybe that's too strong a word, but it sure as hell feels like it.

Or maybe what's making him want to punch something, most likely himself, is that all this while, Wonpil's always been so trusting and eager to follow whatever Younghyun even suggested that it made Younghyun feel unworthy, sometimes. Even when he made it clear that they were going to be exploring new horizons for the _both_ of them, because it wasn't like he'd been all that experienced either when they'd started this up.

It's absolutely irrational for Younghyun to have — he's now realising — subconsciously wished that perhaps Wonpil would've followed him in this, too. Some sort of movie-like realisation of unspoken feelings the moment Younghyun spilled his truth, followed by a montage of best-of scenes from all the romantic comedies he's watched for work.

Fucking hell, who had he even been kidding.

Of all people, he should know about the hard work that goes into constructing fantasies, and how easily they fall apart. About how fantasies are just that: stories told for evanescent comfort. About how stories told in song cut straight to the emotion of it all, without showing any of the sweat or tears or actual mortifying ordeal of lived experience.

On the other hand, of all people, he also should know about the fallibility of human emotion. Twice the fool, then, he.

So: Wonpil's hesitation, while intellectually understood, stings emotionally.

And there's nothing he can do now but wait.

—

**-vi**

"Oh no," Wonpil says dolefully as someone manages to buy out his star player. "Giheun-hyung should've become a football team manager, not a band manager."

"Oh no," Younghyun says, occupied with scrabbling through his luggage. "I didn't bring condoms."

Wonpil's head jerks up, mouth falling open.

"I mean," Younghyun says, like he hasn't fantasised about this sometimes — a lot of the time. "If you don't — if you want, we can. Um." He hesitates. "It's not like there's been anyone else."

Wonpil's still gaping at him, looking nothing so much like a deer caught in headlights.

"Forget about it." Younghyun hurriedly squashes the wreckage strewn about on the floor back into his bag. "I didn't say anything. I'm going to go find —"

"No," Wonpil interrupts. When Younghyun, inexorably drawn, looks back, there's a moue twisting his mouth. "Wait for me to _think_ , hyung."

"I'm not," Younghyun stammers. "I mean, I don't want to pressure you. Into doing anything you don't want."

"I want to." The declaration takes the both of them by surprise. Wonderingly, slowly, Wonpil repeats himself: "I ... want to."

"You ... do?"

"I said so," says Wonpil firmly. "Okay. I'm going to go clean up first!"

And then, because he's apparently been thinking about this too, he puts his phone away and bounces up to go to the bathroom, toiletries bag in hand, leaving Younghyun behind thoroughly bewildered and very turned on. He might never be able to hear the sound of a shower turning on the same way again.

The sounds of water beating against glass and tiles taper off eventually, all whilst Younghyun has just been frozen in place winding himself up, and Wonpil emerges in a bathrobe and a cloud of faintly cypress-scented steam. He always smells so good, and this is what jolts Younghyun to his feet and across the room to bury his nose in Wonpil's neck.

Wonpil laughs a protest. "Yah, hyung, is this what you meant, really?"

"You just smell good," he rumbles, mind flying apart in about a hundred different directions, hands coming to rest on Wonpil's hips. He honestly loves how his hands can span Wonpil's breadth, thumbs curling over his hipbones while his fingers press into his lower back and the soft swell of his ass. Nosing the bathrobe looser, he sets his teeth into the warm, shower-fresh hollow under the swoop of Wonpil's clavicle and sucks.

"Ah!" Wonpil wiggles, and then his hands are squeezing up between them so he can cling. "Hyung, you — ah- _ahhhhhhn_ —" whatever he was about to say is lost in a moan when Younghyun shoves a knee between his legs and nuzzles a wet series of open mouthed kisses up over the ridge of Wonpil's clavicle to where the tendon of his neck is standing out. The stylists have concealer, they can deal.

They lose themselves in this for a while, Wonpil riding his thigh like as Younghyun sucks a series of hickeys back down along the line of his shoulder to the knobbly top of his deltoid, knocking the bathrobe further askew; his hands slide greedily down over the soft cotton to cup Wonpil's ass, fingers digging into the cleft and tugging his cheeks apart. Younghyun can't help but bury a smile into soft, steam-damp skin when Wonpil sighs throatily.

"Hh- ah - hyung, are you just going to fuck me here like this?" Wonpil drops his forehead onto Younghyun's shoulder, laughing a little in disbelief. The idea sends a zip down Younghyun's spine, but — no, this is not the time to attempt athletics and he'd rather not injure Wonpil's back.

Even so, Younghyun pulls back to look at him in the eye. "If you want me to." It's not like he isn't hard and leaking, after that interlude.

Wonpil scrunches his face up. It's so cute Younghyun has to kiss him, and then Wonpil's wrapped around him like a vine; and then they're stumbling backwards until the backs of Younghyun's knees hit something soft; and then they're landing in the deep reading chair opposite their beds.

"I want to stay on top," Wonpil announces, once they've settled.

Like Younghyun could deny him anything, especially when he's like this, pink-flushed and swollen-mouthed, hair damp and curling, the reading lamp next to them pouring golden light along the lines of his face, throat, chest.

"Okay," he says, "I want that too."

Wonpil favours him with a brief, smug little smile, then reaches in between them to start undoing his fly and grumbling about him not being already undressed.

"Sorry," Younghyun says unapologetically. "I got distracted."

"By what? You're not sorry at _all_."

"By you," he says honestly, and lifts his hips when Wonpil swats at them.

Wonpil's hands pause in their movement. He stares at Younghyun, who smiles his best shit-eating grin back up at him. Part of the reason — the many reasons — he loves this is the banter, which had discomfited him so much at the start. But there's just something nice about being comfortable and easy enough with someone to make fun even when he's about to get his cock wet.

"You're so cheesy, hyung." Wonpil rolls his eyes, and then unceremoniously shoves Younghyun's slacks down just far enough for access.

"You don't mind it," says Younghyun easily. He chokes on air when Wonpil swipes and smears the wetness gathered on his sensitive, swollen head with his palm, and then grasps his cock and gives it a few business-like jerks. " _Fuck_ , Wonpil!"

"Mmm." Wonpil gives him a mischievous smirk, kneeing up and scooting closer so that he's lined up. "I'm getting there."

Younghyun freezes in the middle of poking him in the cheek. "Wait, what?"

"What do you think I was taking so long in there for?" Wonpil demands, and clamps his free hand down on Younghyun's shoulder for balance.

Younghyun can't help the way his cock jerks, and Wonpil giggles a bit, giving it another stroke. His thighs must be getting tired, they're quivering, but he's still so committed to this teasing. Fondness blooms like a hot air balloon under Younghyun's ribs; he slides his hands, which have landed in their usual place on Wonpil's hips, back down and around to help bear some of the weight.

"You could've invited me to watch," Younghyun complains, almost entirely occupied with how close he is to being inside Wonpil, who's teasing the both of them with a maddening nudge and press against the tight furl of skin in between his asscheeks — it's wet, because he hadn't been kidding: slippery with lube and. Fuck.

Wonpil gives him a tart look from beneath his lashes. "We'd never have made it out here then." He sighs long and low as he finally sinks down, ass stretching around the fat head of Younghyun's cock, and stops just when the flared, slippery, sensitive glans has slipped in all the way, adjusting with his head tossed back, the wretched tease. He knows that the line of his neck does _things_ to Younghyun.

Then he tightens up.

"Fuck!" Younghyun's fingers flex on Wonpil's ass, and does his best to still his own hips despite the overwhelm. "Fuck, _fuck_ , Pilie, move, please."

"Oh," Wonpil whimpers, unhearing. "Oh, oh."

He's seemingly lost in himself, as he continues clenching rhythmically in these unbearable hot tight little pulses. Younghyun's doing his best to be patient, he is, but — Wonpil screams a little, back arching and his other hand flying up to clutch at the front of Younghyun's shirt, when Younghyun loses control and pulls him further down at the same time his hips snap up into sweet, tight heat.

"Sorry, sorry" — he rubs the meat of his palm into the tense small of Wonpil's back, remorsefully tries his best to hold still — "Pilie, breathe, I'm so sorry."

Wonpil's breathing hard and unsteady, exhales coming out in high and thin, his eyes wide and blinking hard.

"This is too much," Younghyun decides, "okay. Damn, let's just—"

"No," Wonpil gasps; he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in, exhaling slow and hard out. Younghyun can feel him determinedly relaxing his muscles and that's just — the visceral closeness is threatening to undo him even now. "Hyung," Wonpil continues in that breathy voice, "just — you're so — let me —" Wonpil squirmst, and the shift in angle has him gasping out another high, artless noise.

Younghyun dips in to swallow it up, lick right out of Wonpil's mouth into his own; the hand on his shoulder is gripping tight now, Wonpil's neatly trimmed nails biting into his skin. Younghyun experimentally fucks up a little harder than he had been, and Wonpil lets out another broken noise, bearing down in response and his head falling back again, breaking the kiss.

His bathrobe is gaping to his belly now, and his cock is curved up and hard, leaving sticky, wet spots where it taps against the bared skin. Younghyun steadies one hand against the dip of Wonpil's lower back and frees the other to reach for it.

"Nnnnnnnnnn," Wonpil moans at the first brush, "No, please, oppa, t-t—"

"Too much?" Younghyun says, the zing of _oppa_ a familiar zip down his spine straight to his balls. Well, if that's what Wonpil wants. He can do this. He can take care of Wonpil.

"Y-yeah."

"You wanna come just on my cock?"

Wonpil's eyes drift open, half-lidded, the lines of his face setting into faint dissatisfaction. "I've been doing all the work here, oppa."

"Fucking hell," Younghyun half-laughs, half-bites out; he resituates his hands on Wonpil's hips. "You want oppa to take care of you?"

Wonpil pouts and rolls his eyes, nodding

"I can," he says, and holds Wonpil in place. "Here, right? That's where it feels good?" Wonpil hiccups out a mewl when he starts driving his hips up, planting his feet against the floor. "I'll fuck you until you cry, baby, don't worry."

And he knows he's nailing Wonpil just right too, because he's gone speechless, mouth hanging open and tongue tracing his lower lip. His fingers are leaving bruises.

Younghyun gathers him close, closer, so they're pressed together, and untucks Wonpil's legs so that they're drawn up to his chest, feet flat against the firm, cushioned seat. Wonpil moans.

"Okay?" His question is more an exhale than anything else, from deep in his chest. He just wants to get deeper, wants _more_. Wants to make this moment last forever.

Wonpil blinks at him, eyes glossy and unfocussed.

Younghyun lifts one thigh, careful to watch for discomfort as he tilts Wonpil a little so he can hitch his thigh up and over one arm of the chair they're in.

"Ahhh," Wonpil sighs as gravity works with his weight to pull him further down on Younghyun's cock; he wraps his arms around Younghyun's neck. "That's, mmm, nice."

Younghyun can't help burying his face in the crook of Wonpil's neck, groaning into the damp skin there. He feels enveloped by Wonpil, like this: breathing in the clean sweat and the woodsy scent of his body soap, the hot wet rippling heat of Wonpil flexing around him, Wonpil's panted moans puffing warm against his hair. He's skating the edge of white-hot pleasure; he doesn't know how how he can go back to not doing it bare.

He had always thought it would be intense, but he'd never imagined this. The sheer intimacy: the years of accidental exclusivity, the mutual trust, coupled with how it feels like there's fire blazing through his veins and threatening to obliterate every last coherent thought is fraying the control he'd clawed back.

Wonpil's just ... gone somewhere else, whimpering airy little moans that Younghyun lifts his head to taste, to fuck his tongue into Wonpil's mouth in imitation of where they're joined. He's lodged so deep and like this he doesn't have a lot of leverage to maneouvre.

It doesn't matter though, when he can just circle his hips and make Wonpil's breath hitch. Or when it feels like he's being burned up, like his cock is harder than it's ever been his whole life. When he feels so connected, like this — like when he comes he's just going to leave an indelible mark in Wonpil, no matter what happens next.

He buries his face in Wonpil's neck again, sucking mindlessly at the soft, tender skin as he lets the hot friction and slick grind crescendo into a swell that takes them both away.

—

**2018-vii**

For many reasons, including possibly the most pressing one — they're _in the middle of a world tour_ — Sungjin feels compelled by the Burden of Leadership to check in on Younghyun. At least that's Younghyun's theory, in a moment of ungenerous weakness.

Sungjin has driven them out to stuff their faces with barbequed meat in the usual fashion. It's an absolutely transparent pretence. But he does his best to keep up a front, talking about the preparations for their next EP and the next leg of their tour, talking about vocal lessons and making Younghyun compare notes with him. It does actually work, in some ways, to distract his focus for the length of the drive.

But the painfully obvious reason for this ... intervention swells up from the deeps like a wave in a sea storm when they get to the restaurant and are led to a private room to settle into place in quiet.

"Hyung," Younghyun sighs, once their orders have been taken and they're left alone. "Not that I don't appreciate a treat, but can you please just ... spit it out."

"Ah." Sungjin exhales into the mug of tea he'd just brought to his lips and puts it down. "Look, it's just ... the past couple of days, you know, I've noticed that you and Wonpilie haven't been, uh. I mean, we've all noticed. Dowoon asked me if you two quarrelled, and I ..."

Younghyun presses his lips together.

Sungjin sighs again. "I said no, you were just working something out between each other and it wasn't really our business. But it kind of is, isn't it? You're the type to share your problems, Kangbra, but this one big problem you've never talked about ..." he pauses and visibly reflects, eyes sliding up and to the right. "To me, anyway."

"Wonpilie _told_ you about —" Younghyun starts disbelievingly, and then rationality reasserts itself and he bites off the rest of his sentence. "Of course Wonpil went to you." He shakes his head, uncaring of how he sounds faintly bitter, like dandelion greens.

"I mean ..." Sungjin gives him the same sort of cautious look Younghyun assumes one would tend to direct at a wounded animal. "He really doesn't know — you know it takes a lot to make him talk to someone."

Younghyun stares at him, wonders if he really is just that oblivious or acting like he has no idea.

"And, well, you know." He awkwardly shuffles his feet. "We've been friends for a long time."

"Driving buddies, huh," Younghyun says drily, his usual veneer of civility too pared down to hide the resurgent jealousy. He knows, he _knows_ and _trusts_ , at least, that Wonpil had been telling the truth when he'd said he no longer harboured feelings for their leader. But it turns out some emotional reflexes are hard to unlearn.

Sungjin peers at him for an uncomfortably long moment, before he pulls a face and shrugs. "Wonpilie is a good friend. But that's all it's ever been." A wry smile tugs his mouth to one side. "Not my type, as you know. And — _and_ — " he holds a hand up to stave off Younghyun's response. "You're a good friend too, Younghyun-ah, and you know I'm here to listen. Doesn't matter if it's your side or Wonpil's I'm hearing."

"I know." Younghyun pinches the bridge of his nose. "Sorry, hyung, I know. It's just ... it was such a stupid idea in the first place, and it just ... snowballed. And now, I just — I mean, I took advantage. I know. I'm sorry, and I should have expected this, and at least Wonpil doesn't hate me for lying to him, and — "

"Yah!" Sungjin reaches across the table to punch him in the shoulder lightly. "When I said you can talk to me I didn't mean self-flagellate at me! And I'm just hearing nonsense. As far as I could tell, it .... whatever _it_ was, it was extremely mutual. All of us could tell that." He grimaces. "Not the point."

"Then what's your point?" Younghyun, tired, leans back on his hands and asks. "Hyung."

"My point is ... Wonpilie can be very oblivious despite all his sentimentality." Sungjin pauses when a server comes in with a platter of pork cuts and lights up their grill. He grins in that charmingly sheepish way of his and takes the tongs and scissors from her. "Ah, it's fine, we can grill it ourselves."

She gives him a dubious look, but the restaurant is bustling out there, so it doesn't take many more assurances for her to leave.

"Where was I?" Sungjin asks absently, scattering some onion and garlic on the grill.

Younghyun takes the tongs and scissors from him, resigning himself to a Sungjin-hyung lecture special. "Wonpil and being oblivious."

"Ah, right. What was I going to say?"

How is Younghyun supposed to _know_.

"An ... omission isn't lying," Sungjin says, seemingly out of nowhere. "I don't think you were lying, and Wonpilie definitely doesn't." He laughs humourlessly. "He ... really does like you, you know."

"As a hyung. Whom he could have fun with. In bed," Younghyun says in a monotone, flipping the meat. "Hyung, you don't have to —"

"Yah." Annoyance creeps into Sungjin's voice. "He trusts you, and as much as we have all suffered, obviously liked ... you know, with you. I don't want to — do you know how surprised I was when Wonpil said you weren't ever actually dating? I can't tell you what he said when he was crying all over my room, but —"

"He was crying?" The question bursts out of Younghyun before he can help it, and he tries to cover it with the hiss of putting a new round of meat onto the grill.

Sungjin groans and takes the tongs out of his hands. "Fuck's sake, it's Kim Wonpil, of course he was crying. He hates making people feel bad, especially when, you know, they're important to him."

"I'm not sure if you're trying to make me feel better, hyung."

The tongs land with a clatter on the serving plate. "I'm trying to tell you to stop wasting away in your room and _fix this_. Before we go back on tour."

Younghyun stares at him. "Wonpilie asked me to give him time."

"It has been _days_." Sungjin slaps a slice of pork belly into a lettuce leaf. "We have to go back on tour. Kangbra, I know you're sad and hurting now, but please use that brain of yours and try to read between the lines of what I'm telling you."

The thing is that Younghyun's brain has already been churning away: on one level, he is grasping what Sungjin is trying to not-tell him; on another, he doesn't think he has a right to this information; and on yet another, he doesn't feel like — "But, hyung, I don't want to pressure Wonpilie or make him feel like ... he's obliged..."

Sungjin literally puts his ssam down to drag his hands down his face.

"Fuck. Kang Younghyun. Come on, is that likely? You know what Wonpil's like."

And he does.

They both do: easily led until he's _not_ ; easy-going until he's _not_ ; just ... sweet warm fluff wrapped around a core of steel. No wonder, Younghyun thinks as he sighs and nods in acquiescence, Sungjin-hyung had never seemed overly bothered by the two of them.

—

**-vii**

When he'd found out, Sungjin had just said, after gaping gormlessly at them for a bit: "Don't you fucking dare do it on my bunk" and "Don't get caught" and "Oh god we're going to have to buy more cleaning wipes, got to put that on the list".

Guess co-writing a song about getting cheated on really does bond you. And, well, Younghyun has wondered meanly, sometimes, if he was just relieved that there was someone else to redirect Wonpil's attention, if not affections.

He didn't mean to, but that lick of vicious jealousy made him ... rougher, sometimes, made him grip harder. Made him a little more reckless, trying to imprint himself onto Wonpil.

After the first time, Wonpil seemed to take it for granted that he could hang around after they were finished. That he was welcome to come back after waking himself up in the shower, and climb back into the body-warm space of Younghyun's bunk, air still heavy with musk, to sit cross-legged dressed or undressed — depending on how much time they had alone — and chatter away.

The thing is that he isn't unwelcome, of course.

It's dangerous, but this entire arrangement has been an exercise in laying waste to all the usual rules from the start. What, Younghyun asks himself as he lies curled up on his side so Wonpil had space to sit, is one more?

Arranged like this, Wonpil's left hip is at eye level. As he shifts over onto his knees to reach for a pillow, kicked to the foot of the bunk, his boxers slide down to reveal darkening marks the exact length and width of Younghyun's fingers.

The stuttering of Younghyun's breath must have been more audible than he'd thought.

Pausing mid-stretch, Wonpil turns to look back over his shoulder. "Hyung?"

"I'm sorry," he whispers, tracing gently around the bruises. "Fuck, Wonpilie."

Wonpil just blinks down at him, head canted curiously. "But hyung." He settles back down on his bum, reaches out and runs a finger down Younghyun's shoulderblade. "I left marks too. Do they hurt?"

Burying his face in the mattress, Younghyun makes an indistinct noise that he hopes comes across as 'No'.

The light touch turns into a poke.

"No." He turns his face just enough to be heard. "Only a bit."

The other secret: he likes them, the stinging reminder that he has this much, that he can overwhelm Wonpil this much, make him go wild and leave scratches all over his back.

Dowoon'd spotted them once — more than once. It's unavoidable when they share a room between three people; no-one's going to wait all morning to take his turn in the bathroom to change. Modesty is a luxury. So Younghyun's definitely caught Dowoon's eyes going wide, but he's never asked any questions, just averts his eyes and goes back to the webtoon on his phone.

And Jae ... has definitely wolf-whistled.

He doesn't ask Wonpil if his roommate has ever seen his marks.

—

**2018-viii**

Despite Sungjin-hyung's attempted intervention, Younghyun still spends another day wasting away in what he hopes is at least capital-R romantic dissolution in his room. He pretends to be working on lyrics, or expanding his musical horizons for the next album. Or packing for Japan. The clock is definitely ticking down; his suitcase lies open on the floor, half-filled with packing cubes in various states of fullness.

He's sitting cross-legged next to his suitcase, rolling shirts half-heartedly, when there's a soft series of raps against his door.

"What?" he calls out.

The door cracks open to admit Wonpil.

"Oh," says Younghyun, the general lassitude he's been marinating it solidifying. It feels like his mind has ossified on the spot. He shakes himself. "You ... did you leave something you want to bring with you here?"

He watches Wonpil's tongue dart out to wet his lips. His eyes are still shaded by the natural state of unruly curls his hair poofs out into, at home.

Then Wonpil lifts his chin a little, so that his gaze meets Younghyun's; it's fairly obvious that he's had difficulty sleeping.

The shirt in Younghyun's hand unrolls itself and lies forgotten.

"Hyung," Wonpil whispers. "I — " his voice cracks a little; he clears his throat, and steps tentatively a little further into the room before stopping, like — like Younghyun would tell him to get out?

To be honest, Younghyun isn't sure what he wants right at this moment.

"Just tell me what it is, Wonpil." He tries and fails to gentle his tone.

Wonpil's mouth wobbles a bit, before the lines of his face seem to get starker as he visibly draws himself together. There's determination in his eyes and the natural pout his mouth settles into when he's set on getting something done. Younghyun's never really known, before this moment, what it feels like to be simultaneously filled with both terror and drowning fondness.

And then Wonpil closes the distance between them and lowers himself down. Into Younghyun's lap. With impact, like he's making a declaration. Of what, though, Younghyun isn't brave enough to start consciously interpreting. Hasn't got the presence of mine to, either.

Wonpil's weight, so close and tangible, in the position that's become habit in private, suffices to take Younghyun's breath away, spread the calcification of mind to matter. This is very much the sort of inexplicable thing that Wonpil does when his brain shuts off and whatever internal engines that drive his forward motion take over.

So close up, Younghyun can see that Wonpil's lower lip has been bitten raw. Wonpil's gaze skitters all over the room, his breath is shaky, and he's stiff like ... like he never has been before, at least not in Younghyun's lap.

Younghyun's still trying to figure out how to tell Wonpil that this is wreaking havoc on his insides and making his entire chest go tight when Wonpil draws in a deep breath and nods minutely, as though to himself.

"Please just," Wonpil starts, glancing up at him. Their eyes meet and it feels like a bolt right down Younghyun's spine. Wonpil blinks hard and his eyes slide away. "Listen to me, okay?" His voice lilts up at the end uncertainly.

Swallowing hard, Younghyun whispers, "Okay."

Wonpil nods. A smile trembles its way onto his lips. "Okay. I — I wrote a speech but," he exhales in something akin to a laugh. "I forgot it."

The swell of fondness burns as keenly as the desire to hold him. After all this time, it's very hard not to just sling his arms around those narrow hips when there's one (1) Kim Wonpil warm and heavy in his lap. "So you just decided to ..." Younghyun runs out of words and gestures at where Wonpil is sitting, after days of avoidance.

"I —" Wonpil wiggles frustratedly. "I just, it — _listen_ : this feels nice, hyung, and ... comfortable and ... I never stopped to think about why."

 _Habit?_ Younghyun doesn't say. He promised to listen.

"Then Sungjin-hyung yelled at me," Wonpil continues. Younghyun wonders if this was before and after the samgeopsal intervention. "And I cried a bit." He glances up briefly at Younghyun, but his eyes slide quickly away, pink tinting his ears and the top of his cheeks. It's better than the pale, washed out cast of before. "And then I thought about why."

Unable to help himself, the unruly beast called hope trying to thrash against its bounds where Younghyun's done his best to stuff it away, Younghyun says, "And?"

Wonpil twitches and sucks his lower lip between his teeth again, worrying at it before letting it spring back out, chapped and pink. Unhelpfully, he says, "And I think I know now." When he looks head-on at Younghyun, his eyes are big and dark. He looks ... _worried_.

Younghyun stares at him; he knows that his mouth has parted and his face has gone slack with confusion and that it probably looks super unattractive, but —

"Wonpil," he omits any sort of diminutive. "You had better not be playing with me right now."

"I'm not!" Wonpil cries, shock breaking across his face. "I'm not — I just, ah, why is this so — I mean I — I like you, hyung."

The words don't make sense at first: they're just nonsense syllables that resolve into a punch to the solar plexus. He definitely can't help the disbelieving puff of air that escapes his lungs.

"Are you sure you haven't just thought yourself into this?" he asks. "You don't have to — I don't want you to do anything you might regret."

 _It would hurt more to lose you again later_ , is what he means. _If you change your mind._

"No," Wonpil says stubbornly, eyebrows furrowing. "Just because I didn't know how I feel and I had to think about it doesn't mean — thinking means that I _choose_ you." Only the way he's wringing his hands betrays just how nervous he is.

On impulse, Younghyun does what he's always wanted to do and stills them between his own.

"I — oh." Wonpil looks down at their entangled fingers. His pulse, when Younghyun presses his thumb to it, is rabbit-fast. "Um."

"Go on," says Younghyun — croaks, rather, and then has to clear his throat.

"Um. Ah." Wonpil clears his own throat. "And ... I mean, I've been choosing you, haven't I?" His gaze skitters up from their hands to meet Younghyun's own hungry one, before he's glancing quickly back down again, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks hard. "Over and over, even if I didn't know what I was doing. When you ... remember when I mentioned that our ban was over, and you gave me a choice —"

"--it wasn't — _isn't_ something for me to give," Younghyun interrupts hastily.

Wonpil's face twists, and he kicks his heels against the floor in frustration, since his hands are trapped. "I meant, oh, _hyung_."

"I really don't know what you mean, Wonpilie."

The diminutive slipped out without permission, but it has the sum effect of making Wonpil melt a little. Younghyun hadn't even really realised how tightly wound up he'd been, despite their physical closeness; he's been so locked up himself.

"I just meant, it wouldn't have felt like you were giving me a, a choice or — or permission, if I didn't feel subconsciously that — that—"

"It's natural," Younghyun says carefully, "to form an ... attachment after three years. It's not like we aren't friends outside of ... all that, anyway."

Wonpil yanks their clasped hands up to hit Younghyun in the chest.

"Why are you making this _so hard_?" he cries. "I'm saying I didn't _want_ to, and I wasn't even curious at all, and you just _assumed_ that I would want to t-try other people and —" he breaks off and goes quiet for a long, aching moment. "And I wanted ... you to ask me to be selfish. That's what I felt, then. I didn't want to try anyone else, and it made me annoyed, to think of you ..."

"I ..." Words fail him. He needs time to workshop a response.

"Do you ... what are you thinking now, hyung?"

A breathless, disbelieving laugh wheezes out of his lungs. "I don't think I can think right now, Wonpil-ah."

That gets him a long, searching look. "Okay," Wonpil says quietly, looking down at their entwined fingers. "Then ... how do you fe— you haven't pushed me away."

"No," Younghyun agrees, "I haven't." Seized by honesty, he confesses, "I'm not sure I have the will to."

That gets Wonpil's head jerking up; he hadn't thought Wonpil's eyes could get any wider. He looks stricken.

"I don't want you to push me away," he murmurs. "I'll stick to you, hyung."

"You did," Younghyun points out drily, "leave right after I called you sweetheart. We haven't tried hiding anything from the others in years."

Younghyun has wondered for a long time just how unconsciously Wonpil performs _cuteness_. He has his answer now.

Even when the very air in the room is dense with tension, Wonpil still blows his cheeks out and pouts, eyebrows inverting, before protesting: "I didn't know what to do, I didn't even realise what you said until after and then I panicked, because ... I needed to think about it."

And Wonpil likes processing things alone. Of course.

"And I realised what a big mistake I made," Wonpil continues, "but then it was too late and —" he looks up, and oh god, his eyes are welling up. Younghyun can't handle this. "It hurt a lot, to see you hurting. More than it usually does when I see my friends being sad. I couldn't figure out why ... it felt like I was breaking my own heart too." He snorts out a wet laugh. "Then Sungjin-hyung came back that night and told me I was being an idiot and the answer was obvious and to stop being such a fucking idiot."

Younghyun latches to the only part of this he can without his mind atomising. "Sungjin-hyung? Not Jae?"

"Oh," says Wonpil forlornly. "Jae-hyung just pat me on the head when I tried to distract myself with annoying him and said, 'You crazy kids will figure it out, let's get snacks'."

The way his voice modulates when he's speaking in English, even when parroting Jae, will apparently never not make every single last one of Younghyun's internal organs squeeze in some kind of sympathetic cute aggression.

"Did you?" is all that Younghyun can think to ask.

"Did I — yah, hyung, that's irrelevant. I like you!" Wonpil says aggressively; he tugs his fingers out of Younghyun's grip and use them to grasp Younghyun by the shoulders. "I like this. What we have. I don't want to stop. I want to ... I want you to smile again, properly. But also I don't ever want to be the cause of this — this look on your face again. You've been so kind to me all this while. I want to be kind back. And — and — _why won't you let me_?"

His face is all screwed up, his eyes glittering still with the sheen of tears, and the dear round tip of his button nose is pink with the threat of more crying. He looks like he wants to shake sense into Younghyun, and this — of all things — is what makes the cautious restraint Younghyun had been desperately clutching onto by the fingertips crumble.

Letting out a long breath, he lets his hands do what they've been twitching to this whole time and slide about Wonpil's slender hips to pull him closer. If he slips his hands into the back pockets of Wonpil's jeans, Wonpil certainly doesn't seem to mind, if the way his frown just kind of ... breaks open into a smile that feels like sunshine piercing through grey clouds is any indication.

"You're kind to me." Younghyun lets his reflexive answering smile break free. There's a hot air balloon inflating under his ribs. "You're one of the warmest people I know."

"But I kept hurting you this whole time, didn't I?" Wonpil's smile dims a little. "Even when I did nice things. Oh." And goddamn Wonpil's terrifying empathy, becuase — "Especially when I did nice things?"

"No, no," Younghyun says. "That's just — that's not the whole of it, Wonpilie, please. It's not like I was always crying inside. You made me — you make me very happy too."

"Still," mumbles Wonpil, and he tips forward to hug Younghyun tight. "That won't happen anymore, now."

"Just to be clear" — Younghyun is unable to keep the teasing lilt out of his voice, the way it's working its way back in just because he's so goddamn happy — "you're saying I can make you mine?"

From where his face is buried in Younghyun's neck, Wonpil's nose rubs along the skin of his neck and his hair tickles as he nods. His lips move against his skin, but Younghyun can't make any sense of them.

Nudging at Wonpil's face, he prompts, "What?"

"Mm—mmm," Wonpil complains, before turning his cheek just enough to be audible. "You too. You're mine, too."

Younghyun can't help but laugh. The hot air balloon takes flight; he'd float away himself if not for Wonpil weighing down.

"Sweetheart," he says; this close he can feel the promising way Wonpil shivers, Wonpil's little inhale and the smile buried against his neck. "I was already yours."

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am ........a fucking idiot and forgot to upload this together with the main body of the fic slkdljkfs aNYWAY HERE HAVE AN EPILOGUE in which the rest of day6 Suffer. this is [the remember us vlive showcase thing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfJYwHpNEB4) I am basing this on.

###  EPILOGUE 

Sungjin has had many regrets in his quarter-century of existence, but he still doesn't know how to classify his decision to meddle in the (love) affairs of his blasted dongsaeng. He wants to blame it on the desire for a peaceful home life. Jae says it's because he is a soft marshmallow that's been toasted. Sungjin didn't really follow that metaphor.

He can absolutely follow the look of deep exasperation that's only barely veiled by camera-friendly amusement on Jae's face right now, though. Mostly camera-friendly. It's okay, that face is basically Jaehyung's brand by this point.

Wonpil and Younghyun are whispering to each other like toddlers, and Dowoon has a fixed grimace-grin on his face. The one he gets when he can sense that things are awkward but he has no idea what to do.

Across from Sungjin, Jae is doing his damned best to forge on with the script. But it's really hard when their band's resident lovebirds, still in their honeymoon period _even though they'd been fucking for three years_ (because they were idiots), were still wrapped up in each other.

Sungjin can absolutely see the straw breaking the metaphorical camel's back when they all hear Younghyun very loudly whisper, "Remember, it's a _small_ favour that brings you happiness" and Wonpil giggle "Okay, okay" in response. Like, what, Younghyun's afraid of Wonpil asking him for a kiss during their next vlive or something?

Wait, Wonpil absolutely _would_ do that, and then possibly go on to try and camouflage it by trying to kiss everyone on screen. Fuck.

Sungjin loses himself in a split-second of horrified contemplation before being abruptly brought back to set when Jae barks, "Guys!!!" and then shoots Sungjin a look.

"Ah, yes, yes, sorry," Younghyun placates, turning himself back round to face the cameras. Wonpil untwists himself too, smiling sheepishly. The general miasma of happiness surrounding them would make Sungjin truly feel like a gooey marshmallow inside if he didn't actually know them.

The shoot ends without too much further issue, thank fuck, and Dowoon ambles out ahead of everyone after giving the requisite thank you's and much bowing and adorable thumbs-ups. The terrible two follow him, making like a three-legged beast, wrapped up as they are in their own private universe.

"Wow," says Jae flatly, coming to stand next to Sungjin. He's looking at them too. "I regret everything."

"I'm happy they're happy, but ..."

They both watch as Younghyun slings his arm around Wonpil and ducks unnecessarily close to whisper into his ear, nose nudging up against Wonpil's temple.

Wonpil squirms away, laughing, and mid-squirm twists enough to catch Jae and Sungjin's expressions. He laughs even harder, then, throwing an arm out to point them out to Younghyun.

Eyes bright, cheeks pushed up with the force of his fond smile — he really hadn't been fooling _anybody_ — Younghyun turned as well. "Yah, hyungs!" he shouts, herding Wonpil through the door to the dressing rooms with his body. "Stop gawping, let's go!"

"Gawping," mutters Jae. "I'll gawp him."

"Wonpilie might kill you first."

"I can take that brat."

"No bet," says Sungjin, and then cackles at the dirty look Jae directs at him. "Come on, let's go make sure they don't traumatise Dowoon in the dressing room."

*******

**Author's Note:**

> me: I didn't realise this would be this long when I started fleshing out this plunny  
> bysine: THE STORY OF OUR LIVES 
> 
> also me: I didn't realise when I came up with an fwb pining idea that I'd have to write ... so many sex scenes. 
> 
> if this made you feel anything please hit that kudos button, [retweet](https://twitter.com/forochel/status/1246646310272458753), and let me know what you think in the comments! talk to me in this time of social distancing pls. everyone take care, wash your hands etc


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